Wednesday 11 July 2012

S.Meenakshi Ammal - the bestseller


S.Meenakshi Ammal - the bestseller

NAME: 
LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2004

S Meenakshi ammal - the bestseller

The family – about nine of them got into the two ambassador cars that was hired for the day . After what seemed to be like eternity for the men , the women had finally selected the Kanchivaram Silk sarees at Nallis for their dear Meenu’s wedding, next month.

The purchases were finalised. After about 17 silk sarees , 8 for the bride and 9 for the other close relatives, the manager at Nallis thought that it would not be a bad ROI to buy the family some tiffin and coffee. Not that the father of the bride was a high networth individual, but it was a once in a life time event for his darling daughter and so it was a big occasion. The father of the bride had sponsored one such occasion for his elder daughter and after this one there was one more to go.

The extended family- nine in all , fussed around a little bit and then agreed for the invitation for Tiffin and coffee. And so the helper boy was sent to get 11 plates of idli, vada , pongal and sambar, 9 for the family and two for the drivers driving the hired amdassador cars . The green chutney and coconut chutney were complimentary along with the tiffin and 11 cups of filter coffee was then ordered from the ‘Karpagambal mess’.

The father of the bride was counting his huge wads of cash ( no credit cards then ) and was paying at the counter while the members of the family were letting out loud belches after the last sip of hot filter coffee had gone in. With a lingering after taste of the filter coffee , the women of the household checked up to see if all items were packed along with the complimentary jute and plastic bags that accompanied with 'Nallis' printed on them.

It was important to make this brand statement during the wedding that the sarees were indeed purchased from 'Nallis' . For 'Nallis'were the most reputed and leading silk saree retailers in Chennai for years.

Meenu - the bride to be was in her second year at college, when this proposal came from the boy’s side. The horoscopes matched and the family verifications were done.

The groom party was invited for the bride seeing ceremony .
All went well except for the few strands in ‘Abheri’ raga which went off beat when Meenu was asked to exhibit her singing abilities.

Meenu did not show much of singing talent right from the days when she was young. But it was important for the girls to learn a few Thyagaraja keertanas and some light classical devotional songs for the bride seeing ceremony and the navaratri Golu thereafter .

Meenu , was probably tone deaf and it took her music teacher a great deal of effort to get her to perfect the ‘Raghuvamasudha’ in RagaAbheri and the ‘Sudhamayi’ in Raga Amritavarshini.

The date for the bride seeing ceremony was fixed and it was tremendous pressure for the pupil as well as the music teacher before she could perfect the Abheri keertana composed by Thyagaraja for the bride seeing audience.

Meenu’s family , was not sure if the groom party had noticed the imperfection in the musical rendering by Meenu, but relief came through , when they wrote back in a post card mentioning that the boy liked the girl and they would like to proceed further.

The groom’s parents came down the next week itself to negotiate the ‘terms’. About 25 sovereigns in gold, apart from 2 kgs of silver , all household utensils including a ‘Sumeet mixer’ and a grinder were agreed upon after a couple of hours of deliberations and haggling which involved repeated mentions of the boy’s educational background and earning capabilities .

Subrahmanyam had graduated from the Regional engineering college(REC) – Trichy a couple of years back and was working in Bhilai in a steel plant.

Venkataraman, the father of the bride was a little weak with his geography, asked where this place was. He was told that it was in the ‘north’ somewhere near Delhi. As it usually happens in the role of the ‘Father of the bride’ he did not want to be too inquisitive by asking further questions and decided to check up the India Map on the World Atlas book the next day in the office.

The ladies in the household were excited.

The marriage expenses , especially the Sumeet mixer part of it did look like it would go out the budget. But Balancing budgets was the men’s job.

‘Meenu is very lucky’ they told each other . The boy looked very kind hearted and was unlike his mother who was scrutinising every bit of Meenu’s walking , talking and the family background and its current social and economic worth. He seemed to be detached from all these worldly dealings. Like most eligible bachelors who had some standing in the marriage market, he had left it to the wisdom of his caring and concerned mother to negotiate the deal.

Meenu would be living in far-away Bhilai. Which meant that there would not be much of the mother-in-law taunts that all the other women had to go through when they were newly married. And that was made made her 'lucky'. She would have no one to pick on her if the vegetables that she cut were not in equal shapes and sizes or if the clothes drying on the clothes line on the terrace were not picked up and folded in the middle of the afternoon.

That is unless her husband took notice of it . He did not look the kind, but you never know , the women opined from behind the doors .

There were things to still worry about . For one, Meenu did not pay much attention to learning household chores from her mother and aunts all these years .
She would have to catch up in the next three months , for that was when the marriage date was fixed for.

Meenu had protested that her second year exams were clashing with the dates, but the elders saw no sense in her foolish protests , since her second year degree results would be of no consequence or use to her in her marital life ahead.

Venkataraman was a ‘Scale 3 officer’ with the Accountant General’s (AG’s) office in Chennai . His father owned large tracts for farm land in Kumbakonam .

The father had four children . He married off his daughters into ‘respectable’ households by the time they were sixteen and educated his sons by sending them to Presidency college in Madras . The elder son took the civil services examinations and secured a rank which was somewhere in the bottom of the list . But a rank it was … and thus he joined the Indian Revenue Service and is now an IRS officer working with the Secretariat in New Delhi. The younger one – Venkataraman cleared one of those numerous competitive exams and got through as a clerk in the AG’s office. He had made his way through the ranks at the AG’s office to a ‘Scale 3 officer’.

The government salary and its perks were enough to take care of the family if one balanced the monthly budgets and lived within the specified budgets . But he knew that unlike his elder brother prosperity would always elude him.

For one, his brother was blessed with a son. He had no children after that.

Venkataraman hoped for a son every time his wife conceived. After three daughters and a fourth one which turned out to be a boy but still born, they had reconciled to the fact that god did not intend to bless them with a son who could carry the family name.

Lalitha, Venkatraman’s wife was a dutiful housewife who was relentlessly taunted by her Mother in law. There were many reasons . One among them was that she was a little dark in complexion compared to the other daughter in law. She proclaimed that thankfully her daughters did not inherit her complexion . The fact that she bore three daughters , one after the other even if they were not as dark as their mother , would anyway drive her son into bankruptcy and untold misery in the future. That was some thing she kept complaining and never tired of saying so to anyone who cared to listen.

Lalitha was a hard working , selfless housewife , who along with her husband saved atleast 70% of his salary in anticipation of the marriage expenses for their daughters. They were determined to get their daughters married off in ‘good families’ , without getting bankrupt. And so when their first daughter finished her high school, they wasted no time in finding a groom for her. College education was not necessary for a girl, Venkataraman opined. What a girl needed was some basic education, especially in English so that she could entertain her husband’s colleagues and some basic maths so that she could maintain accounts with the milk man and the dhobi.

After Janaki, the first daughter got married , three years ago… they found that like in all marriages , the budget did overshoot their expectations . It would take a good four-five years more before Venkatraman could make up enough savings to fill up the short fall for his second daughter’s marriage.

Meenakshi was the name that was christened when Meenu the second daughter was born. Unlike in her music classes , she fared extremely well in academics and topped the high school leaving exam and was the State rank holder . She scored a perfect 100 in mathematics which was her favourite subject and 99 in all the rest.

While Venkataraman and family were firm that the daughter could not go to college, the principal of her high school persuaded them to send Meenu to college. Any college would love to take her. She did not need any recommendations was what they were told. She would also get the scholarship for top ranking girls from the chief minister’s fund.

Meenu herself wanted to pursue a bachelors degree in Mathematics .

After due deliberations by the family which mainly included a father and a grandmother , Stella Maris college, the ‘girls only’ college , which was the nearest from home was chosen as the place where she could pursue her education. Meenu was delighted that she could pursue her passion and studied for a B.Sc degree in mathematics in the college.

Her delight did not last long … a relative who came visiting saw Meenu and opened the topic with her mother about an ‘excellent alliance’ from the family that he knew from very close quarters. Lalitha, conveyed this to Venkatraman that night. Venkatraman, not sure of how he would manage the finances, pretended to be disinterested.

It did not miss his calculative mind, that if his daughter went on to complete her graduation, then he would have to look out for atleast a post-graduate son-in-law and nothing less. Which would mean more marriage expenses for a grand marriage. This had been troubling him ever since Meenu ‘s first year college reports showed her as the class topper and a possible candidate who would go on to be a gold medalist from the university when she graduated .

Venkataraman’s father had died 15 years back and his mother had come to live along with them. The farm land in the village was let out to the other farmers who paid Venkat and his brothers some money , cultivated and earned the profits. Off late, with the communist party getting stronger in the remote villages, the absentee landlords were relentlessly coming under attack. ‘Land for the tiller’ was being propagated and Venkat and his brother noticed that they were getting the same money from their mango and coconut groves , from what they had got 10 years back despite prices going up.

That night Venkat wrote a letter to his brother in delhi about the proposal to sell off the lands. His brother , now owned a flat in Karol bagh , and would not be in such dire need of money. Venkat hesistatingly added that he needed the money for Meenakshi’s marriage and mentioned about the proposal from the family of the boy working in Bhilai steel plant.

His brother was very well-read as are all those who work in far away places and would know about job security in steel plants in particular the one in Bhilai which he was told was somewhere in the ‘North’ near Delhi.

It was not long after that the brother replied. He agreed that the political turmoil was getting worse and it was a wise decision to sell off the agricultural lands. He wanted to know if and when he would need to take leave from office to come down for the registration formalities.

He also added that Bhilai Steel plant was a prestigious plant and only the brightest of engineers go to work there. The boy in question must therefore have been an academically bright engineer and so he should not let go off this opportunity and fix up this proposal at the earliest. He did not know much about Meenu’s academic brilliance and did not care about it either.

With his brother burdened with three daughters, he ( or was it his wife ???) was perennially worried that if anything should happen to Venkataraman, the burden of marrying off the girls would fall upon him. That could have been a reason he agreed with Venkataraman to speed up the formalities.

The land was all in their mother’s name. After their father’s death, he had not left any will and so all property was transferred to her name as she happened to be the natural heir. So it was not necessary for Venkatraman’s brother to be coming all the way from Delhi. Venkataraman would make all arrangements , identify a buyer , fix up the registration date and take the mother with him to sign off the registration documents in the taluka office in Kumbakonam and divide the money among the brothers.

And thus, the deals were struck . One for the land and another for Meenu. The land did not protest about its sale as did Meenu about her marriage, for she was keen to finish atleast the second year of her college .

She was undoubtedly the one to get the gold medal if she persisted.

But the bosses at Bhilai steel plant were not aware of Meenu’s exam dates , when Subrahmanyam asked for two weeks leave for his marriage. And no-one really bothered to tell him that Meenu had her exams while he was planning to get married to her.

Meenu still went to college everyday. She was hoping for some miracle to happen that would ward off any evil plans that came between her and her pursuit of that gold medal.
Her Head of the department ( HOD) had been telling her she was gifted with intelligence and should have been with the Indian Institute of technology (IIT). The IIT did have a postgraduate – M.Sc degree course in mathematics and a gold medal from the university would qualify her for securing admission for her post-graduation at the Indian institute of technology.

She was not an impractical girl. She was aware of her father’s financial burden, but was irritated with it. She was irritated with the entire social and economic system that came in her way of pursuing Mathematics.

But she knew that she would have to come to terms with the gripping reality. She was now engaged and soon to be married. She could not run away from reality, try as much as she did.

Today was the day when the extended family ( 9 in all as mentioned earlier ) had decided to go for the wedding purchases . Meenu said, she did not care about the silk sarees and the design of the gold jewellery and went off to college. Thus it was not 10 but 9 in all who fitted into two ambassador cars that afternoon at the Nalli’s.

On the way back they stopped at Stella Maris College and picked up Meenu along with them. The college closed at 2.30 p.m and she was anyway out on her way home.

They picked up Meenu and squeezed her in whatever little space there was left in the car.
Her aunt who usually picked on her for her lack of attention to details and feminine chores was suddenly being extraoridnarily sweet to her. She got Meenu to sit on her lap and hugged her tight.

Inside the amby , the decibel levels were high. The arguments over choosing the ‘elephant design border’ blue saree vs. the ‘peacock design border’ green saree for the ‘First night’ for Meenu was being heatedly discussed among the women .

The driver pressed on the accelerator . She saw the main building of Stella Mari college whiz past her and fading away into that far away horizon ... Instinct told her that , today would be her last day in college ...

Meenu realized it was time for her to come to terms with the reality.
There really was no way out.

It was hot and sultry outside but that was not exactly what irritated her.
Some kind of melancholy gripped her. 

Her mother asked the driver to stop the car at Vijaya book stores near Mylapore tank.
Her mother, Aunt and Meenu got down from the car . 

This one purchase did not need deliberations and discussions like the silk sarees.
That was one purchase that has and will go down as an essential for all girls who have to go off to faraway places and set up homes, her aunt said.

They stepped into Vijaya Book stores to buy a book.

It was a 185 page book called ‘Samaithu Paar’ by S. Meenakshiammal.
(Loosely translated for the non tamil speaking reader ‘Samaithu Paar‘ - ‘Cook and see’)

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I have just now realized that the heroine of this story shares her name with the best selling author ... believe me it is sheer coincidence... I did not intend it that way ... and the two are disconnected ... as the story teller I know I have the discretion to change her name ... but I do not want to ... for 'Meenu' is dear to my heart ... so dear reader ... please do not confuse between the two ... they are two different characters ... S.Meenakshiammal was real and is not alive today. Meenu on the other hand , is fictional and any resemblance to anyone alive or dead is only because there are so many of them ...I myself know of atleast a dozen , who would identify with Meenu ... as they say in Tamil ...'veetukku ...veedu ..vasappadi' . ( loosely translated : it is the same story that repeats itself in every household) 
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In days when women could not as much step out for anything more enterprising than to buy Vegetables and Silk sarees from the local market, it was a formidable idea that S.Meenakshiammal conceived and delivered.


The importance of S.Meenaskhiammal’s contribution to the South Indian Woman-kind, especially the ones who are married off and settle in faraway places from Bhilai to Boston , Calcutta to Connecticut, Delhi to Detroit and where have you… is immense.

The list of ‘faraway’ places, about 25 years ago included Bombay ( Mumbai ) , Calcutta (kolkata) New delhi ( no change as yet), Ranchi ( now in Jharkhand) , Jamshedpur and everywhere else where they required people with high analytical and logical skills.

The boys from south especially from Kumbakonam, Thanjavur, Tiruchy or Palghat seemed to be endowed with generous proportions of these skills.
The C V Raman’s and Subramaniam Chandrashekar’s thus emerged as the high profile ones…winning nobel prizes and things like that .

But there were numerous others not so high profile but successful and wealthy in varying degrees , who in about a generation’s time made their ways through RECs, IITs and IISc for their degrees .

And then for a living to far-away places in Bhilai , Calcutta, Mumbai , Ranchi, Jamshedpur , New Delhi or Pune. The more successful managed to go to even more far -away places like Boston, Connecticut, Minneapolis, Los-angeles and New-York to name only a few.

The Girls from south especially from Kumbakonam, Thanjavur, Tiruchy or Palghat on the other hand due to ‘family circumstances’ resigned to the kitchen to learn how to make ‘Poritha kozhambu’ ‘adirsams’ and ‘pappadams’ after school.
But not all of them did a good job of it.
Take Meenu for example.
Never really ventured into the kitchen till a month before the wedding .

A crash course on cooking can only teach you so much ...

Apart from everyday cooking , there were elaborate items to be prepared for festivals , for Sumangali Prarthanai ( A Ritual when women pray and eat for the well being of their husbands ) and Shrardhams ( Ritual performed for the dead on their death anniversary every year) .

There were also those yearly seasonal things like, Avakka oorugai - Mango pickle, Pavakkai vetthal - dried bitter gourd and Jevvarisi vadam - Fried chips made from refined Tapioca (Food loving tamilians - Forgive my translation. ) to be made during the summer months .

That was where S.Meenakshiammal saw an untapped business opportunity.

Every man living in that far away place would need a young wife for ...mmm… among many ‘other’ things, for cooking his two square meals and a tiffin everyday.

Till then there existed no process documentation for cooking on not only your sambar and rasam , but also on poritha kuzhambu , vettha kuzhambu or payasam or for that matter adirsam , idiappam ,pappadaamAvakkai oorugai , pavakkai vetthal or Jevvarisi vadam. . .

That was when she went on to pioneer first ever cookery book on South Indian ( Iyer ) cooking more than 50 years ago in 1951. Which is how the ‘Samaithu Paar’ by S.Meenakshiammal became an essential item , which every mother gave her daughter , who was going to be setting up home in faraway places.

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About 24 years later ,

It was hot and sultry outside but that was not exactly what irritated her.
Some kind of melancholy gripped her.
Meenu asked the driver to stop the car at Vijaya Book Stores near Mylapore Tank.
Meenu got down from her car ( It was not an ambassador this time but a Maruti Esteem) 

She stepped into Vijaya Book Stores , along with her daughter to buy another copy of ‘Samaithu Paar’ by S.Meenakshiammal.

This edition was a much thicker one with more pages, glossy cover and best of all it was available in English too !!!

No… there was’nt another wedding in the family .

Meenu’s daughter is going to the United States to pursue her PhD in Mathematics at the Masuchusetts Institute of Technology.

24 years… is not a very long time for wounds to heal and dreams to be buried !!! 

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